An e-mail to the school board

An e-mail to the School Board

The recent school board elections in your district (the Isla Verde Unified School District in Northern California) signalled a major change in the community. For one thing, the demographics of the school district have shifted significantly. While it continues to serve a primarily middle-class and professional population who are overwhelmingly from native English-speaking backgrounds, recent world events have caused an influx of refugees in part because of the actions of local charitable and religious organizations. In addition, a local military base that was closed five years ago has been converted into low-income housing, and has drawn a substantial group of Spanish-speaking (mainly from Mexico but about of quarter of them from other central American countries) as well as Tongan and Samoan families. Because the base installation falls within the school district boundaries, there has been a significant increase in students from these backgrounds.

The demographic changes have fuelled considerable local political controversy, one result of which was a highly contested school board election that resulted in new board members for 3 out of the 5 seats. The two incumbent seats represent traditional liberal perspectives sympathetic to immigrants at an abstract level, but with little experience in dealing with language minority populations -- the district has had only a small (about 2%) group of children of foreign professionals in the computer and biotechnology industries. The three new seats are made up of the following:

Ruth Segal, a retired attorney whose own children attended the public schools, and who ran out of concern for the education of her young grandchildren. In the elections, Ms. Segal was outspoken about the need for making the schools the best they can be for all students, and that different students have different needs, and principals and schools, especially the site councils, should be given considerable resources and leeway in determining what's best for the school. In her campaign speeches, she spoke passionately about the wisdom of true local control and the "broken promises of centralized bureaucracy". She said the the problems posed by the influx of immigrants and refugees into the district can be taken care of locally, because they are concentrated mostly in two out of the district's twelve elementary schools.

Arian Belago, a CEO of a small high-technology company with a doctorate in computer science. Mr. Belago is a personal admirer of Silicon Valley entrepreneur and political Libertarian Ron K. Unz, who authored Proposition 227. He campaigned almost exclusively on the coat-tails of the popularity of Proposition 227, saying that the English learners should be placed in intensive English immersion classes and that the district should not even consider instituting bilingual education programs for its new groups of students. He has spent considerable time in Israel, where his company has an office, and believes that the Israelis have a successful system of assimilation of immigrants into Hebrew, and that the same should be done here. Unlike Mr. Unz, however, Mr. Belago has a history of anti-immigrant activity, including serving on a local committee to promote Proposition 187 which banned public services to undocumented residents (for the record, Mr. Unz was actively opposed to Proposition 187 because he felt that it would alienate immigrants).

Sara Cantiller-Chang, a parent who was born in the Phillipines and immigrated when her American-born husband changed jobs and moved to the Isla Verde area. Ms. Cantiller-Chang early in her career was a high school English teacher in Manila. She believes in the value of bilingualism, and she has been a vocal advocate for better foreign language programs in the schools. Her message resonated strongly with the local business community and, because of her engagement with local civic organizations such as the Rotary Club, she was widely considered the "establishment" candidtate during the campaign. Curiously, aside from showing compassion citing her own immigrant background, Ms. Cantiller-Chang did not take an active position with respect to the language minority students in the schools, saying that she would study the matter thoroughly if she is elected.

The first school board meeting of the year is about to take place next Tuesday, and one of the agenda items is a discussion of programs and policies for English learners. You are concerned that the school board lacks even the most basic information on the legal rights of these students. Based on what you know from the readings, write an e-mail memorandum to the school board outlining the district's responsibilities under Federal law to educate these students. The note should be short -- no more than 800 words -- people don't read long e-mails. Be sure to give them the gist of the major federal court decisions as well as a sense of where they should turn for additional information. Try to be creative in making the information as appealing to the board members as possible!

Resources

Crawford, Chapters 1-2.
Lau v. Nichols.
Revisiting the Lau Decision: 20 Years After. ARC Associates. Reflections by Ling-Chi Wang, Edward Steinman, and Edward De Avila.
Hakuta, K. Testimony to U. S. Civil Rights Commission.

Additional Resources:

Some key concepts (from the Office for Civil Rights website).
Castaneda v. Pickard (this is dense reading. This case is succinctly covered in Crawford, but is supplied here as reference because of the importance and elegance of the decision.)
OCR Website on LEP Resources.